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A New York resident lost close to $1 million in cryptocurrency. That single case became one of the clearest examples of the damage done by SocksEscort — a for-hire proxy service that gave criminals across the globe a way to hide while they stole.

A Network Built On Hijacked Devices

US and European authorities announced Thursday they had shut down SocksEscort after years of operation. The service worked by infecting routers and other internet-connected devices with malware, turning them into cover points that masked the real locations of cybercriminals.

According to the Department of Justice, the network had quietly burrowed into at least 369,000 devices spread across 163 countries. Criminals could then route their attacks through those compromised machines, making them far harder to trace.

The malware at the heart of the operation — known as AVrecon — had been publicly identified by cybersecurity firm Black Lotus Labs as far back as July 2023. The network kept running anyway.

The takedown was not a single agency effort. Law enforcement from Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, and the US worked the case together.

On the American side, the FBI’s Sacramento Field Office, the IRS Criminal Investigation Oakland Field Office, and the Department of Defense’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service all had a hand in it.

Europol and Eurojust provided cross-border coordination support. Black Lotus Labs and the nonprofit Shadowserver Foundation supplied technical intelligence that helped investigators connect the dots.

Criminals Paid In Crypto To Stay Anonymous

SocksEscort did not just attract individual bad actors. It ran like a business. Customers paid to access the service, and they did so anonymously — using cryptocurrency to avoid leaving a financial trail.

Based on reports from Europol, the platform pulled in at least 5 million euros, roughly $5.7 million, from its paying users over the course of its run.

Authorities were ultimately able to seize 34 domains, take down about two dozen servers operating across seven countries, and freeze approximately $3.5 million in crypto tied to the operation.

Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle said proxy services of this kind give criminals the cover to carry out attacks, move illegal content, and dodge detection. She credited the international cooperation for exposing the infrastructure behind it.

Fraud Stretched From Bank Accounts To Crypto Wallets

The crimes enabled by SocksEscort went beyond any single method. Officials linked the network to bank fraud and cryptocurrency account takeovers dating back to 2020.

The New York victim’s case stood out for its scale, but reports indicate the damage was spread across multiple countries and target types.

Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView

Ethereum and Solana are currently leading developer activity in the crypto space, while developer activity in the broader ecosystem declines. This comes as prices continue to struggle with the ongoing war between the U.S. and Iran, which is sparking rising oil prices. 

Ethereum And Solana Lead Developer Activity Amid Broad Decline

Artemis data show that the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems are leading in developer activity amid declines in weekly commits and weekly active developers in crypto. In the Ethereum ecosystem, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is seeing the most activity, with 31,620 weekly commits. 

It is worth noting that several sectors in the Ethereum ecosystem currently rank among the top seven in developer activity. Meanwhile, the Solana ecosystem comes next, with the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) Layer 1 and Layer 2 seeing the most activity, at 7,056 weekly commits. However, there has been a significant decline in the crypto ecosystem as a whole. 

Further data from Artemis shows that weekly commits have dropped from a yearly high of around 870,900 in March last year to as low as 217,500 in February. Notably, weekly commits crashed around the time of the crypto market’s infamous ‘October 10’ crash, which led to the largest liquidation event in crypto history. 

Similarly, the weekly active developers have also declined from a yearly high of 10,600 in May last year to as low as 4,000. This metric has been declining since the October 10 crypto market crash, suggesting that current price action is affecting developer sentiment. Ethereum and Solana have also seen declines in their weekly commits and developer activity despite leading in these metrics. 

The Ethereum network has seen a 54% decline in weekly commits over the last three months and a 34% decline in developer activity over this same period. Meanwhile, the Solana network has seen 43% decline in weekly commits over the last three months and a 40% decline in developer activity over the same period. 

Why Prices Continue To Struggle 

Ethereum and Solana prices continue to struggle, as experts note that the crypto market is in a bear market. CryptoQuant’s Head of Research, Julio Moreno, recently reiterated this, stating that the bear market is still on despite the relief rally that Bitcoin saw this week, which pushed ETH and SOL higher. 

Market analyst Doctor Profit recently stated that Bitcoin is likely to bottom between September and October, suggesting that Ethereum and Solana could still see larger declines. Meanwhile, Moreno told The Block that ETH could decline to $1,500 by the third quarter of this year or the early part of the fourth quarter if the bear market persists. The analyst also noted that Ethereum is facing an “adoption paradox,” with network activity rising while the ETH price falls.

Momentum around XRP may be entering a new phase as emerging on-chain data shows a growing activity within its broader ecosystem. Recent metrics from Flare, a network designed to bring smart contract functionality and DeFi capabilities to assets like XRP, suggest that decentralized finance participation tied to the network could be gaining traction. 

What The Latest Flare Metrics Reveal About XRP Activity

A notable shift may be unfolding around XRP that many market participants have not yet fully recognized. An analyst known as XFinanceBull on X has revealed that recent data from the Flare network shows a supply of more than 132 million FXRP, with nearly 80% already locked into DeFi protocols on Flare Network.

The ecosystem has also secured over $149 million in value and processed more than 2.8 million transactions, while user growth continues to accelerate. These figures are derived from verifiable on-chain activity that any participant can verify, rather than being promotional estimates.

For years, one of the most common critiques of the altcoin was its lack of decentralized finance, and the bottleneck limited what holders could actually do with their assets beyond the transfers and storage. XFinanceBull argues that Flare is beginning to address that gap by enabling the token to interact with decentralized financial applications through the Flare system.

Through the Flare framework, holders can now deploy their assets across DeFi activities such as lending, liquidity provisioning, token swaps, and yield generation. The charts show activity is rising, user counts are increasing, and more capital is being locked into the ecosystem. From XFinanceBull’s perspective, these trends suggest that XRP holders are gradually shifting from holding the asset to actively utilizing it within decentralized finance, and this is just the start.

How A Stronger Ripple Could Expand The Network

Many market participants focus primarily on XRP price movements, while overlooking the companies building the infrastructure behind it. Analyst XFinanceBull has also highlighted that Ripple’s announcement of a share buyback, which implies a valuation of roughly $50 million, reveals something important about where the industry is heading.

XFinanceBull believes that the institutional investors do not place that level of confidence in infrastructure companies without seeing long-term demand. Ripple’s long-term strategy has centered on developing enterprise blockchain rails that connect banks, payment networks, and financial institutions across global markets. At the core of that settlement framework is the XRP Ledger.

A stronger company could mean larger development terms, deeper partnerships, and broader integration into global payment systems. Over time, these developments would help grow the network surrounding the asset powering those payment rails.

The analyst noted that by following crypto infrastructure for years, it becomes clear that as the companies building the system get stronger, the ecosystems around them often grow even faster. That is the aspect that many participants overlook about the altcoin.

Using Bitcoin to buy groceries or pay a bill sounds simple. Under current US tax law, it is anything but. Every transaction — no matter how small — triggers a taxable event that must be reported to the IRS, forcing users to calculate capital gains on purchases as minor as a cup of coffee.

That legal reality has kept Bitcoin largely in the hands of investors rather than in everyday wallets, and a Washington advocacy group says Congress has only a few months left to fix it.

A Shrinking Window For Action

The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) has been working the halls of Capitol Hill, meeting with 19 offices across the House and Senate over the past three months.

The group is pushing for a de minimis tax exemption — a rule that would allow small Bitcoin transactions under a set dollar amount to bypass capital gains reporting entirely.

Based on BPI’s own timeline, the window to pass such a measure runs from now through August 2026. After that, midterm election pressures are expected to crowd out any serious movement on complex tax legislation.

Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming has been the loudest voice in Congress on this issue. She introduced a standalone bill in July 2025 that would exempt crypto transactions of $300 or less, with a $5,000 annual cap.

The bill stalled. And with Lummis set to leave the Senate in January 2027, the BPI warns that her departure could remove the issue’s most committed champion from the legislative arena for years.

Two Bills, One Goal — But No Clear Path

The legislative picture is complicated by competing proposals. While the Lummis bill targeted Bitcoin and broader crypto transactions, a separate House bill introduced by Representatives Max Miller and Steven Horsford focused exclusively on dollar-pegged stablecoins.

The existence of two bills with different scopes has muddied the path forward, even as BPI reports that bipartisan support for some form of exemption remains intact.

Pierre Rochard, a board member at Bitcoin treasury firm Strive, put the stakes plainly:

“The number one impediment to Bitcoin payments adoption is tax policy, not scaling technology.” The Burden Of Buying With Bitcoin

That line cuts to the heart of what advocates are fighting. The current tax treatment effectively punishes anyone who tries to spend Bitcoin rather than hold it.

Every purchase requires tracking the asset’s value at the time of acquisition and again at the point of sale — a level of record-keeping that makes routine transactions impractical for most people.

A de minimis exemption already exists in US law for foreign currency transactions, giving supporters a legal precedent to point to. Whether Congress acts on it before the political calendar closes the door remains an open question — one that, according to the BPI, may not come around again for a long time.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView

Over the last week, the Bitcoin bulls have been putting up a fight to combat the consistent decline, and this has led to the price ranging around the $70,000 level. With this newfound recovery trend, things look to have taken a turn for the better as buyers are moving back into the arena. The result of this could be a clear upward target that could send the price back above 6-figures and kickstart the bull run again as a result.

3 Green Candles Says Bitcoin Bulls Are In Charge

Since the decline began back in February, Bitcoin has been hard-pressed to complete consistent green days. In fact, since January 2026, the cryptocurrency has been unable to complete three full days in the green. That is, until now, as the recent recovery trend shows that bullish sentiment has returned once again.

Crypto analyst Master Ananda highlights this development as important in showing that the bulls have now taken over control of the Bitcoin price. The three green daily candles, the analyst believes, are confirmation that a new rally has arrived.

Not only are the three consecutive daily candles confirming another rally, but the crypto analyst also says that Bitcoin will put in a higher high this week, meaning that the local uptrend will be confirmed in its entirety. This suggests that the price will stay above $70,000 through to the end of the week.

The recovery has now set the Bitcoin price inside a rising wave pattern. If this wave is confirmed, it would mean that the months of accumulation and sideways price movements have now come to an end for Bitcoin. Not only this, but it sets the tone for a major recovery rally.

The first of the targets set for Bitcoin from here lies at the $80,000 level. There is expected to be some resistance here, but this will likely not stop the rally. Once this area is surmounted, then Master Ananda expects the Bitcoin price to rise until it stops at around $100,000.

As for the rest of the market, they have so far followed Bitcoin’s lead, and the most likely outcome is that altcoins will rise as BTC does. The crypto analyst points to this, saying that altcoins are already reacting positively, and thus, this is expected to continue.

A recent report from Bitcointreasuries.net has highlighted a significant shift in the behavior of Bitcoin (BTC) treasuries, revealing that the number of sales has outpaced purchases for the first time in February.

Bitcoin Treasuries Experience Net Decrease

According to the report, public companies engaged in treasury strategies purchased or disclosed nearly 7,800 BTC worth approximately $522 million at the end of February 2026. 

Notably, about two-thirds of these acquisitions were attributed to a single entity, Michael Saylor’s Strategy (previously MicroStrategy), while just six other companies accounted for the rest. 

However, selling activity overshadowed these additions, with various public treasuries collectively selling or reducing their holdings by approximately 8,600 BTC. This resulted in a net decrease of around 800 BTC for the month. 

Even if there had been no sales in February, the net additions would still have paled in comparison to previous months, such as January and December, which saw gains of 41,000 BTC and 29,000 BTC, respectively.

Additionally, the report analyzed the dollar value of public companies’ holdings, which fell from $102 billion in January to $78 billion in February, reflecting Bitcoin’s downtrend experienced during the month. 

Despite this downturn, there is a glimmer of hope, as the report indicates that public treasuries added an estimated 62,000 BTC so far in the current quarter, primarily driven by Strategy’s activities.

Strategy Poised For Continued Dominance

Strategy emerged as the dominant player in Bitcoin acquisitions during February, purchasing 5,075 BTC, which represented two-thirds of the month’s total purchases. By the end of February, Strategy held 717,722 BTC, valued at approximately $48 billion. 

The company accounted for 65% of all Bitcoin treasury buying in February, reinforcing its dominance in this sector. However, it is worth noting that this was one of Strategy’s smaller buying months, as it had made larger purchases in December (22,627 BTC), January (40,150 BTC), and the first half of March (21,009 BTC).

Several other companies also contributed to Bitcoin acquisitions during the month. Coinbase reported in its fourth-quarter 2025 results that it holds 15,389 BTC, having increased its holdings by 841 BTC since the previous quarter. 

MARA Holdings also saw its balance rise, reporting 53,822 BTC at month-end—a gain of 572 BTC from the last quarter. The company, however, has faced speculation about potential sell-offs, despite clarifying its position regarding sales in its 10-K filing. 

Looking ahead, the report suggests that Strategy is likely to maintain its dominance in Bitcoin buying, especially given its strong start in March and its commitment to ongoing BTC purchases. 

Nonetheless, significant sales by various companies in recent months, along with new approvals for these sales from firms like MARA Holdings and GD Culture Group, may lead to further reductions in holdings and potentially result in net negative changes in the months to come.

At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $71,090, which is an increase of 1.4% over the last 24 hours, despite failing to surpass the resistance level of $74,000 earlier on Friday. 

Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com 

Распродажи на рынке биткоина вступили в завершающую фазу. Текущая ситуация напоминает структуру прошлых рыночных циклов перед началом восстановления, заявил аналитик хедж-фонда Blockforce Capital Бретт Манстер (Brett Munster).

A Crypto platform confirmed that their main domain website had been hacked, which exposed its users to a wallet draining exploit.

A No-Fun Crypto Hijack

It is a truth universally acknowledge that, no matter the size of a global geopolitical crisis, hackers will continue to ravage through the crypto market. This time, the victim was memecoin issuance platform Bonk.fun. In a March 12 post on the social network X, Tom (@SolportTom), one of its operators, warned the users not to interact with the domain “until further notice”, as hackers had injected a crypto wallet drainer on it:

Do not use the https://t.co/4xXs3cMJx0 domain until further notice, hackers have hijacked a team account forcing a drainer on the DOMAIN.

URGENT.

— Tom (@SolportTom) March 12, 2026

The official X account of the Solana token launchpad, backed by Raydium and the BONK community, also announced the hack and echoed Tom’s striking warning:

A malicious actor has compromised the BONKfun domain, do not interact with the website until we have secured everything.

— BONK.fun (@bonkfun) March 12, 2026

Who Is Affected And How

Tom explained that the phishing scam set up a fake “Terms of Services” (TOS) signature prompt which, when signed, allowed the drainer to move the unaware user’s funds. According to Tom, the only users compromised were the ones who interacted with the fake TOS. He clarified that neither previously connected users nor traders of bonk fun tokens on third-party terminals were affected. He also assured that the security breach was spotted early so “the losses are minimal to date”:

To answer the concerns I’m seeing:

1. No if you connected to bonk fun in the past you’re not affected

2. No if you trade bonk fun tokens on terminals etc you’re not affected

3. The only people affected were people who signed a fake TOS message on the bonkfun domain after…

— Tom (@SolportTom) March 12, 2026

This is not a Raydium or BONK smart contract exploit, but the case of a Web2 infrastructure failure that bled directly into Web3. This type of domain hijacking and phishing drainer scripts work by the attackers taking over the frontend and presenting normal-looking prompts that abuse wallet approvals.

A Pattern Of Exploited Vulnerabilities

In recent years, approval-phishing and “fake UI” attacks have stolen billions of dollars: one Chainalysis investigation reported the amount of $14 billion in on-chain scam inflows in 2025, with projections pointing above the $17 billion as more wallets continued to be identified.

As scam revenues grow and AI‑driven impersonation scales, crypto security in 2026 is less about the perfect code and more about defending everything around it: from domains to social accounts, employees and users  decision-making. In February last year, attackers hijacked Pump.fun’s X account to push a fake PUMP token, as covered by our sister website NewsBTC. Not too long ago, OG trader Sillytuna was drove out of the crypto market after a multimillion-dollar theft that combined online address poisoning and offline violent actions.

The times are testing traders online and offline, both inside and outside the bloc. As the crypto landscape grows more complex, traders would do well to heighten their caution: prefer direct contract interaction or trusted aggregators, and use tools to monitor and regularly revoke token approvals.

Cover image from Perplexity, SOLUSDT chart from Tradingview

В 2025 году в США ущерб от мошенничества с криптоматами достиг $333 млн. Одной из причин роста преступлений стало использование злоумышленниками технологий дипфейков на основе искусственного интеллекта. Об этом сообщили специалисты компании CertiK, работающей в сфере блокчейн-безопасности.

Аналитик ончейн-платформы CryptoQuant заявил, что биткоину может грозить период «великой скуки». По его мнению, первая криптовалюта способна надолго застрять в диапазоне $60 000–80 000 из-за слабого притока нового капитала на рынок.

The Trump family’s decentralized finance (DeFi) venture, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), unveiled on Friday a new investment opportunity for participants and supporters of the platform. 

As earlier reported by Reuters, investors who commit to locking $5 million worth of their tokens for six months will gain “guaranteed direct access” to certain members of the WLFI team in exchange for voting rights.

World Liberty Financial Introduces ‘Super Nodes’

This new initiative includes family members of President Trump among the “Supporting Team” listed in World Liberty’s documentation. Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump are all mentioned, though the company has clarified that they will not be part of the direct access arrangement.

Voting on this proposal closed on Thursday, with the company claiming that 99% of the 1,786 votes cast were in favor of the new arrangement. 

The introduction of a tiered structure for token holders, referred to as “Super Nodes,” represents a shift from the company’s earlier commitment to democratizing access to financial resources. 

David Wachsman, the company’s spokesman, clarified that while Super Nodes will have access to the WLFI team, it does not guarantee a partnership. Instead, it suggests that significant participation in governance will be encouraged. 

According to World Liberty’s website, this initiative aims to incentivize token holders to engage more actively in the governance of the crypto firm, which generated over $460 million for the Trump family in the first half of 2025.

Exclusive Dinner For TRUMP Memecoin Holders

To become a Super Node, investors must stake 50 million WLFI tokens. By staking their tokens for six months, holders will not only gain voting rights on governance matters but also earn a yield of 2% in WLFI tokens for participating in at least two votes.

Previously, all WLFI token holders enjoyed the ability to vote on alterations to the company’s underlying code, with each token representing one vote. They could also express their opinions on the venture’s strategic directions, as outlined in World Liberty’s Gold Paper. 

However, with the passage of this new proposal, voting rights will now be restricted to those who have staked their tokens for the designated period, further limiting access to crucial governance processes.

In a related development, Bitcoinist reported that President Trump is preparing to host the second exclusive dinner for holders of his official memecoin, TRUMP, scheduled for April 25 at Mar-a-Lago. 

At the time of writing, World Liberty Financial’s native token, WLFI, is trading at $0.1079. This represents gains of almost 6% over the last 24 hours, as the wider cryptocurrency market has experienced a significant recovery ahead of the end of the week. 

Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com

Российские силовики и энергетики выявили две нелегальные майнинговые фермы в деревне Черелисино Ярославской области. Об этом сообщили представители филиала «Россети Центр» — «Ярэнерго».

Американский миллиардер и инвестор, основатель фонда Duquesne Capital Стэнли Дракенмиллер (Stan Druckenmiller) заявил, что глобальные платежные системы могут перейти на стейблкоины в течение ближайших 10–15 лет.

Бывший премьер-министр Великобритании Борис Джонсон (Boris Johnson) назвал биткоин «гигантской финансовой пирамидой», заявив, что стоимость криптовалют во многом зависит от доверия инвесторов, а не от их внутренней ценности.

Crypto moved to the center of Washington’s latest North Korea sanctions action on March 12, after the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated six individuals and two entities tied to DPRK-run IT worker schemes. For the digital asset industry, the significance was not only the sanctions themselves, but how explicitly the case framed cryptocurrency as infrastructure for moving illicit revenue across borders.

OFAC Targets North Korean Crypto Network

According to Treasury, the targeted schemes systematically defrauded US businesses and generated nearly $800 million in 2024 for North Korea’s weapons programs. Secretary Scott Bessent described a model in which overseas operatives used fake identities and corporate deception to infiltrate legitimate companies, then turned sensitive access into a second layer of leverage. “Targets American companies through deceptive schemes.” “Treasury will continue to follow the money.”

That framing matters because the case was not presented as a conventional cybercrime story alone. Treasury and Chainalysis both pointed to a blended playbook: fraudulent hiring, wage extraction, financial facilitators, and crypto rails used to convert and move proceeds. Chainalysis called the operations “a sophisticated and growing threat.” It added, in equally direct terms, that “cryptocurrency plays a central role” in moving those funds back to North Korea while evading sanctions.

The clearest crypto-specific detail in the action concerned Nguyen Quang Viet, CEO of Vietnam-based Quangvietdnbg International Services Company Limited. Treasury said Nguyen converted about $2.5 million into cryptocurrency for North Koreans between mid-2023 and mid-2025, including illicit earnings tied to Amnokgang Technology Development Company, a DPRK IT company that manages overseas worker delegations. Treasury also said OFAC’s designations in this case reached facilitators in the DPRK, Vietnam, Laos and Spain, underscoring how geographically dispersed these support networks have become.

Chainalysis said the March 12 action included 21 designated addresses across multiple blockchains. Those addresses spanned Ethereum, Tron and Bitcoin, with seven linked to Amnokgang, two Ethereum addresses tied to Yun Song Guk, one Bitcoin address tied to Hoang Minh Quang, and 11 newly added addresses for previously designated Sim Hyon Sop, a representative of Korea Kwangson Banking Corp.

Treasury’s narrative also showed how the IT-worker pipeline extends beyond software contracting into broader financial enablement. It said Yun had led a group of North Korean freelance IT workers operating out of Boten, Laos since at least 2023 and coordinated several dozen transactions totaling more than $70,000 with Hoang Minh Quang tied to IT services. In a separate strand, Treasury said Do Phi Khanh and Hoang Van Nguyen supported Kim Se Un, including through bank-account access and crypto transactions, while Hoang had also helped procure foreign currency for the regime.

The action lands against a broader backdrop in which North Korea’s crypto footprint has been getting bigger, not smaller. Chainalysis said in its 2026 crypto crime report that North Korea stole more than $2 billion in 2025, its most successful year on record, while value received by sanctioned entities overall surged 694% last year. In that context, the OFAC designations look less like an isolated enforcement step and more like another attempt to squeeze every layer of the DPRK crypto stack, from stolen funds and laundering routes to the labor schemes that generate fresh inflows.

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $2.44 trillion.

Рост цен на нефть на фоне конфликта вокруг Ирана вряд ли повысит расходы биткоин-майнеров на электроэнергию. Главный риск для отрасли — усиление волатильности биткоина и снижение доходности добычи криптовалюты, считают аналитики компании Luxor Technology.

Hong Kong is expected to grant the first batch of stablecoin issuer licenses within two weeks, reportedly choosing HSBC and Standard Chartered as the first companies to obtain the long-awaited approval.

HSBC, Standard Chartered Lead Hong Kong’s Stablecoin Race

On Friday, Bloomberg reported that HSBC, Hong Kong’s largest bank by assets, and a joint venture led by Standard Chartered are set to be among the first companies to receive the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s (HKMA) stablecoin licenses this month.

Authorities are reportedly prioritizing institutions already authorized to issue banknotes and will approve the two banks in the first batch, according to people familiar with the matter. Notably, the HKMA favors bank-led stablecoin issuers due to their robust capital base and ability to ensure greater safety while facilitating wider adoption, the sources affirmed.

Last month, the financial authority’s Chief Executive, Eddie Yue, announced it would grant the first, limited batch of stablecoin provider licenses in March as the review of 36 applications was nearly completed.

The HKMA enacted the Stablecoins Ordinance last August, which directs any individual or entity seeking to issue any fiat-referenced stablecoin (FRS) in Hong Kong, or any Hong Kong Dollar (HKD)-denominated token, to obtain a license from the financial regulator.

The number of licenses and the timetable had not yet been finalized and were subject to change. However, sources suggested March 24 as a possible date, as revealed by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), which first broke the news.

Industry sources suggested that Hong Kong’s licensing regime will initially prioritize the local currency. Standard Chartered has already announced plans to issue a Hong Kong dollar-pegged token.

The London-based bank, alongside Animoca Brands and Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT), formed a joint venture last year to apply for a license to issue a HKD-denominated stablecoin.

Since 2024, the trio has been part of the financial authority’s stablecoin issuer sandbox program, which enabled limited-scale tests of these tokens across various scenarios, including e-commerce payments, cross-border trade settlements, and tokenized asset trading.

RD Technologies, a Hong Kong-based fintech firm founded by former HKMA CEO Norman Chan Tak-lam, and JD Coinlink, the fintech arm of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, also started testing HKD-pegged tokens under the regulator’s sandbox program last year.

Meanwhile, HSBC’s potential approval has reportedly surprised the industry, given the bank’s absence from the HKMA-led sandbox. HSBC has focused on tokenization projects, including tokenized deposits.

However, the bank had reportedly been actively engaged with local and global players in the digital-asset space and is committed to playing a central role in Hong Kong’s evolving financial ecosystem.

A ‘Testing Ground’ For Mainland Financial Innovation

Hong Kong’s expected approvals come amid China’s recent decision to explicitly prohibit onshore tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), intensify scrutiny of related offshore activities, and prohibit the issuance of yuan-pegged offshore stablecoins without authorization.

Last month, Chinese authorities reaffirmed their long‑standing ban on virtual assets, saying that domestic companies and overseas entities under their control are prohibited from issuing virtual currencies abroad without official approval.

As reported by Bitcoinist, legal experts have suggested that Hong Kong’s ambitions to establish itself as a leading regulated hub for stablecoins were at risk of being hindered by the People’s Bank of China’s explicit crackdown on the sector.

Nonetheless, experts also believe Hong Kong could serve as a testing ground for financial innovations, given competition with the US and favorable conditions for the internationalization of the yuan, the SCMP noted.

“Hong Kong is a testing field for Chinese assets and money to go abroad on the blockchain,” Raymond Chan, chairman of the Greater Bay Area FinTech League, told the news outlet. “We are the firewall defending against challenges that may disrupt the market in China, thanks to our full set of regulations.”

Война США и Израиля на Ближнем Востоке не закончилась, а свежая американская статистика не оказалась сенсационно плохой. Без новой шокирующей информации криптоинвесторы вздохнули с облегчением, а цифровые активы немного выросли в цене.

На фоне роста числа нападений на владельцев криптовалют сооснователь Эфириума Виталик Бутерин предложил «настраивать секретные слова». По задумке создателя второй по капитализации криптовалюты, если произнести такие слова рядом с умными часами, телефоном или домашним гаджетом, система автоматически вызовет экстренные службы.

Минюст США и Европол ликвидировали работавшую более десяти лет хакерскую сеть SocksEscort и заморозили связанные с сетью $3,5 млн в криптовалюте.